Bailey 


Love  and  Low 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

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1 


LOVE  AND  LAW 


An  Essay  "Based  on  some 
Talks  to  Teachers  and  Parents 


THOMAS  P.  BAILEY,  Jr.,  Ph.D. 

lAsiociatc  Profeisor  in  the 
University  of  California 


San  Francisco 

Tbc  IVhitaker  &•  Ray  Company 

(Incorporated) 

iSoc, 


Copyright  1899 

by 

Thomas  P.  Bailey.  Jr. 


Thou  slialt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  ;ill  thy  heart,  and 
with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind,  and  with  all  thy 
strength.  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  There  is 
none  other  commandment  greater  than  these.  On  these  two 
commandments  hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophet^.— Jesus. 

He  that  loveth  his  neighbor  hath  fulfilled  the  law. 

—SL  Paul. 

The  truth  is,  the  whole  life  of  man  needs  timing  and 
tuning. — Plato. 

The  general  is  not  due  to  the  order,  but  the  order  to  the 
general. — Aristotle. 

Within  its  deeps  I  saw  internalised 

Into  one  volume,  bound  with  love, 
That  which  is  outered  in  the  universe. 

— Dante. 

How  happy  is  he  born  and  taught, 

That  serveth  not  another's  will; 
Whose  armor  is  his  honest  thought. 

And  simple  truth  his  utmost  skill! 

This  man  is  freed  from  servile  bonds, 

Of  hope  to  rise,  or  fear  to  fall; 
Lord  of  himself,  though  not  of  lands; 

And  having  nothing,  yet  hath  all. 

— Sir  Henry  Wot  ton. 

Love  is  not  love 
Which  alters  when  it  alteration  finds. 

— Shakespeare. 


906310 


LOVE   AND    LAW 

An  Essay  "Based  on  Some 
Talks  to  Teachers  and  "Parents 

The  title  of  this  essay  prevents  you  from  accusing 
me  of  originality.  No  one  can  say  anything  essentially  "Sources, 
new  about  love  or  law,  or  about  love  and  law.  Thou- 
sands of  institute  and  convention  platforms  have 
resounded  with  the  eloquent  lore  pertaining  to  "disci- 
pline" in  the  home  and  in  the  school.  Let  my  origin- 
ality consist  in  declining  to  be  original,  and  at  the  same 
time  making  an  earnest  effort  to  state  your  experience  in 
such  effective  fashion  as  will  not  do  violence  to  the  truth 
of  human  nature.  While  there  is  nothing  new  under  the 
sun,  the  same  old  truths  must  be  kept  in  the  sunlight  of 
vital  interest,  if  they  are  to  stay  sweet  and  wholesome. 
So  let  us  air  and  sun  some  good,  old-fashioned  ideas. 

Before  beginning  our  work,  we  shall  acknowledge 
our  obligations  to  the  "Sources,"  for  we  are  all  studying 
sources  nowadays.  Our  title  is  due  to  Mark  Hopkins,  of 
blessed  memory,  who  was  not  an  evolutionist,  or  some 
other  good,  modern  thing,  and  yet  who  still  teaches  us. 
As  for  the  rest,  the  thought  comes  (through  a  "sub- 
jective" and  imperfect  medium)  from  the  New  Testa- 
ment, which  is  tolerably  old,  flanked  by  the  Anglo-Saxon 
tradition,  which  is  deligiitfully  vogue,  and  by  some 
second-hand  Hellinism,  vvhatever  that  is. 

—  5  — 


Age 


Love  and  La7v. 

All  the  great  writers  and  lecturers  say  this  is  the 
The  Child's  child's  age,  so  we,  not  desiring  to  be  original,  say  so  too. 
We  hazard  the  suggestion,  withal  tremblingly,  that  the 
other  ages  have  also  been  the  child's  age.  May  we  dare 
go  further,  and  say  that  this  is  the  woman's  age — and  the 
man's  age — and  the  machine's  age!  Some  irreverent 
folks  have  hinted  that  this  is  the  age  of  talk  about  the 
child.  Not  more  than  a  few  weeks  ago,  I  heard  a  young 
man  say  that  the  problem  of  the  "Man  with  the  Hoe  "  is 
further  complicated  by  the  equally  difficult  problem, 
"The  Hoe  with  the  Man."  But  we  can  best  fulfil  our 
purpose  by  admittifig  that  this  is  the  child's  age.  So, 
"Parents,  obey  your  children,"  for  "The  child  is 
father  to  the  man."  All  of  which,  being  interpreted, 
does  not  mean  smart  sophistry — which  is  worse  than 
originality,  but  rather,  this:  Parents,  obey  the  law  written 
in  your  children's  members.  Not  that  the  children  are  to 
interpret  this  law — God  forbid!  We  grown-ups  are  the 
best  interpreters,  if  we  have  thought  and  lived  deeply. 
In  any  event,  we  are  better  qualified  than  our  children;  for 
we  are  our  own  children — some  of  us,  perhaps,  our  own 
great-grandchildren.  The  knowers  of  that  deeper  law  are 
the  child-/z7i:<?,  not  the  child-zVz.  The  child-like,  having 
put  away  childish  things,  may  enter  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  which,  first  of  all,  is  coming  into  possession  of 
our  true  selves  made  in  the  image  of  God.  So  far,  then, 
as  we  are  thus  qualified,  we  may  have  the  parent-children 
obey  us,  the  children-parents.  If  we  are  not  such-minded 
and  so-hearted,  let  us  eschew  all  child-study  discoveries, 
and  follow  in  the  procession  of  the  ages  the  paths  of 
those  who  have  not  lived   in  vain.      In  time,  if  we  do  the 


Love  and  Law. 

will,  we  shall  know  of  the  doctrine.      After  all,  the  wisest 

thing  on  earth  is   the  experience  of  the  best   men  and  The  Love  of 

L*w, 

women,  of  men  and  women  whose  life  bulks  large  in  total  and  the 
result,  whether  the  factor  of  length  of  days  be  largest,  or  Law  of  Love, 
whether  breadth  of  hours  and  thickness  of  minutes. 

An  American  patriot  once  told  the  colonists  of  the 
Revolutionary  period  that  they  must  all  hang  together,  else 
they  would  hang  separately.  So  it  is  with  Love  and  Law. 
Law,  by  itself,  is  an  unreal  abstraction.  The  only  law  fit 
for  human  beings  is  that  made  by  real  persons  with 
hearts  and  souls  and  minds,  ybr  real  persons  like-natured. 
This  is  why  we  believe  in  making  our  own  laws,  when  the 
law  for  each  is  the  law  for  all,  and  the  law  for  all  is  the 
law  for  each.  Cruel  and  fanatical  legalism,  or  else 
remorseless  tyranny,  results  if  the  law  be  not  kind  enough 
to  protect  and  wisely  aid  the  weakest,  as  well  as  to  con- 
trol the  strong  who  would  control  others.  Sovereignty 
must  enforce,  but  equity  must  temper  and  adapt.  Law 
is  made  for  man,  not  man  for  law.  People  can  be 
treated  alike  only  by  being  treated  differently.  Unity  is 
bald  and  false  without  diversity.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
law  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  agrees  with  the  "law  of 
the  jungle"  that  the  many  are  more  than  the  few  because 
they  are  many  persons,  not  merely  many  things.  One 
true  and  loving  soul  is  worth  infinitely  more  than  all 
mere  things  of  earth  and  sky.  If  the  law  of  the  many  be 
false,  and  the  law  of  the  few  be  true,  then  the  many  shall 
become  the  few,  and  the  few  the  many — in  the  long  run. 
The  first  shall  be  last,  and  the  last  first.  The  heavy  bat- 
talions must  get  on  the  side  of  the  truth.  That  which 
survives  now,  in  the  short  run,  is  not  necessarily  true;  but 


Love  and  Law. 

the  true  fittest  will  survive  at  the  end.     So  the  law  that 
The  Love  survives   shall   be  the  law  of  love.      But  many  the  steps 

ofl^aw. 

and  various  there  be  before  the  law  of  love  that  is  im- 
plicit in  the  true  love-of-law  becomes  explicit  and 
regnant. 

Our  time  needs  just  about  what  all  the  times  have 
needed,  but  certainly  one  thing — the  love  of  law.  Mind 
you,  I  do  not  say  the  abstract  love  of  law,  or  the  law  of 
abstract  love,  but  rather  the  desire  to  fetter  ourselves 
that  we  may  be  free,  to  die  that  we  may  live,  and  to  die 
daily.  To  say  that  order  is  heaven's  first  law,  is  to  say 
that  law  is  the  source  of  that  order  which  makes  possible 
the  goods  and  worths  that  stretch  organically  from  life  to 
love.  Since  these  things  are  so,  brethren,  muse  on 
this:  That  the  love  of  law  can  be  taught,  while  the  law  of 
love  must  be  lived.  If  this  strikes  you  as  a  new  aphorism, 
pray  reduce  it  to  the  prosiest  prose;  but  try  to  under- 
stand it.  To  teach  is  to  help  to  live,  and  more  fully:  to 
be  taught  is  to  live.  Nevertheless,  all  our  conscious 
teaching,  whether  as  parents  or  teachers,  or  both,  is  an 
affair  of  law — law  in  the  content  of  our  teaching,  law  in 
the  form  of  its  presentation,  law  in  the  ideals  aimed  at; 
but  we  teach  love  best  by  telling  it  least  and  living  it  most. 
We  teach  civics;  we  live  ethics.  What  we  teach  must 
live;  what  we  live  must  teach. 

Let  us  trace  the  stages  in  the  development  of  law- 
abidingness  in  character.  We  may  thus  be  helped  in 
some  measure  to  make  our  practical  discipline  law-fulfill- 
ing. "Thou  that  teachest  another — teachest  thou  thy- 
self?" You  may  well  reply,  "How  did  you  find  out 
about  these  stages  you  are  about  to  discourse  on  ?     Surely 

-8  — 


Love  and  Laiv. 

this  is  some  new  and  strange  thing  you  are  going  to  force 

upon  us."     I  think  not;  the  newness  will  consist  only  in    Habits,  cus 

'  '  .       torn  and 

the  Standpoint,  and  even  that,  in  its  instinctive  forms,  is  i^aw. 
as  old  as  Adam.  Since,  however,  none  of  us  like  to  sail 
under  false  colors,  let  me  frankly  say  that  I  am  going  to 
speak  from  the  standpoint  of  the  science  of  character- 
development,  or  ethology,  if  you  prefer  John  Stuart  Mill's 
name  for  it.  I  graciously  grant  you  leave  to  dissent  from 
anything  new  and  theoretical  I  may  have  to  say,  if  you 
will  kindly  grant  me  one  postulate.  Here  it  is,  in  brief: 
There  are  at  least  three  forms  of  orderliness  in  the  charac- 
ter-life. They  are  habit,  custom,  and  law.  Of  these, 
habit  comes  first;  custom  (including  habit)  comes  next; 
law  (including  habit  and  custom)  comes  last.  Babes  can 
form  habits;  children  can  receive  custom;  youths  respond 
to  law.  If  the  gist  of  this  idea  is  not  consonant  with  your 
experience,  the  rest  of  this  essay  has  little  for  you.  As  I 
want  you  to  read  on,  let  me  state  the  proposition  in  another 
way:  i.  Habit  is  largely  a  matter  of  the  nervous  system;  is 
to  some  extent  associated  with  consciousness  (when  habit 
is  being  formed),  but  it  has  no  necessary  connection  with 
explicit  self-consciousness.  2.  Custom,  based  on  habit, 
has  much  to  do  with  consciousness,  and  a  little  to  do 
with  self-consciousness  (when  a  new  custom  is  being 
received).  3.  Law  is  largely  an  affair  of  self-conscious- 
ness, but  is  based  on  habit  and  custom,  and  is  a  becom- 
ing explicit  of  the  principles  involved  in  them.  Will  you 
pardon  me  if  I  put  it  in  still  another  form?  i.  Habit  is 
egoistic,  socially  indifferent,  and  makes  for  the  survival 
of  the  individual  and  the  species.  2.  Custom  is  negatively 
social,  appeals  to  our  fear  of  being  unlike  our  fellows   or 

—  9  — 


Love  and  Law. 

becoming  estranged  from  our  clansmen;  the  religious  in- 
Habit.  stincts  are  its  main  support.     3.   Law  is  positively  social;  its 

"thou  shalt  not"  represents  its  lower  stages  based  on  cus- 
tom; but  positive,  rational  principles  underly  it,  and 
therefore  it  is  at  once  individual  and  social;  it  stands  for 
correlative  rights  and  duties.  Now  that  we  have  agreed 
so  well  thus  far,  perhaps  you  will  take  another  step  with 
me.  Even  if  you  do  not  approve  of  going  in  this  direc- 
tion, or  in  my  company,  perhaps  the  exercise  will  do  you 
good.  You  may  even  take  more  pleasure  in  walking 
hereafter — in  other  paths  ! 

Habit  is  associated  with  any  and  every  form  of 
emotion,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  anger  and  fighting  char- 
acterize the  habit-stage  especially.  We  fight  to  form 
habits.  We  fight  to  break  them.  Even  when  habits  are 
formed  without  apparent  contest  or  opposition,  they  are 
due  to  our  strenuous  endeavors  to  assert  ourselves,  to 
satisfy  our  curiosity,  to  gain  or  give  sympathy;  for  habits 
mark  the  determined  stands  taken  by  the  organism  as 
represented  by  the  nervous  system.  How  many  of  us 
remember  so  well  that  the  habits  most  strongly  impressed 
on  us — often  "against  our  will" — are  the  very  strongest 
in  us  to-day  !  True,  the  habit  of  working  out  arith- 
metical examples,  for  instance,  may  not  survive;  but  the 
habit  of  "  working  out"  may  abide  with  us,  especially  if 
"working  out"  has  been  practiced  in  several  directions. 
If  you  want  to  make  a  man  angry,  run  athwart  his  habits 
— witness,  for  example,  the  meal  habit,  and  the  mail 
habit.  What  a  fateful  hour  is  6  p.  m.  !  Indeed  6  a.  m. 
is  sacred;  with  some  of  us  to  rising,  with  others  to  sleep- 
ing.     Yesterday  a  kindly,   but  officious  official  informed 


Love  and  Laiv. 

me,  as  I  was  toiling  toward  my  mail-box,  that  there  was 

no  mail  in  the  box.     I  am  glad  he  was  too  far  off  to  see  the   ^"*'°"' 

°  and  Law. 

momentary  flash  of  annoyance  at  being  deprived  of  the 
satisfaction  of  finding  out  for  myself,  even  at  the  expense 
of  several  foot-pounds  of  energy. 

If  anger  and  opposition  and  strenuousness  especially 
accompany  habit-forming  and  habit-breaking,  fear  and 
reverence  assuredly  belong  to  the  receiving  and  discarding 
of  aisioni.  We  accept  customs  because  we  are  afraid  not 
to.  When  we  outgrow  them,  we  are  almost  superstitiously 
fearful  of  the  consequences  of  our  temerity.  Such  college 
customs  as  "rushing,"  irreverent  "joshing,"  and  the 
rest,  excite  our  sympathy,  even  though  we  feel  obliged  to 
stand  up  for  higher  law  rather  than  lower  custom.  We 
fear  that  college  spirit  has  died  with  the  rush  that  is  to 
be  the  last,  and  that  the  liberty  of  the  press  has  become 
bondage  indeed  when  the  faculty  interferes  with  the 
sportive  "annual."  Older  folk  frequently  fail  to  understand 
the  reverential  nature  of  custom,  even  the  most  brutal. 
And  we  often  help  to  kill  reverence  in  trying  to  root  out 
the  objective  irreverence  of  a  revered  custom  or  usage. 
But  custom  does  not  make  for  character  unless  it  pre- 
pares the  way  for  law,  or  at  least  is  not  radically  incon- 
sistent with  the  highest  things  that  law  stands  for. 

We  come  now  to  the  emotional  side  of  the  law-stage 
par  excellence.  Let  us  not  forget  that  the  higher  stages  in 
development  include  the  lower  ones,  and  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  draw  a  sharp  line  anywhere  in  the  organic 
growth  of  character.  Fear  passes  gradually  into  love, 
reverence  into  enthusiasm.  Only  little  by  little  does  love 
become  perfect  and  cast  out  fear.       Reverence  persists. 

-11- 


Love  and  Law. 


War  and 
Wrath. 
Fighting 
for  Habit. 


Without  it  love  is  vacuously  sentimental.  Law  and  love 
thus  go  together.  The  peace  that  makes  law  "become"  also 
begets  love.  One  of  the  best  instances  in  which  love  and 
law  go  together  is  in  true  patriotism.  We  can  trust  the 
lawless  patriots  even  less  than  the  loveless  ones. 
Righteous  war  is  for  the  sake  of  preserving  peace,  so  that 
love  and  law  may  hold  their  joint  sway.  We  need  to  be 
constantly  reminded — "lest  we  forget" — that  war  and 
wrath  are  useful  and  right  only  so  far  as  they  preserve  for 
us  our  sacred  customs  and  our  valued  institutions,  or  else 
save  these  boons  for  others,  or  give  them,  because  we 
have  found  them  good,  and  know  them  to  be  good  for  all 
men.  Let  the  authors  of  erotic  romance  pit  law  against 
love;  but  let  us  remember  that  law  is  the  formal,  and  love 
the  formative,  aspect  of  the  creative  energy  of  social  char- 
acters informed  by  the  "  Social  Conscience,"  which  is  the 
love-and-law  of  each  and  all  of  us. 

Hobbes'  "state  of  nature  "  and  Herbert  Spencer's 
primitive  "  militancy"  are  now  our  theme.  New  move- 
ments, new  ventures,  new  thoughts,  new  feelings — in  fact, 
beginnings  of  all  kinds — are  full  of  tenseness,  excite- 
ment, opposition,  war.  We  break  through  old  habits, 
high  or  low,  only  to  form  new  ones.  Full  blooded  races, 
needing  to  be  fed  to  the  full  with  food  and  power,  move 
upon  weaker  peoples  and  dispossess  them  ;  these  tend  in 
turn  to  shift  the  burden  of  bondage  upon  still  weaker 
aggregates.  So  is  it  with  individuals.  There  is  a  "  strug- 
gle for  existence,"  and  a  "survival  of  the  fittest" 
"through  natural  selection."  The  fighters  are  the  best 
raw  material  for  future  civilization.  It  is  the  strong  and 
sturdy  meek  who  inherit  the  earth.      Mere  militancy  must 


12  — 


Love  and  Law. 

give  way  to  industrialism  and  some  other  desirable  isj7is, 
but  it  is  a  c;ood  start.  The  egoistic  children  who  have  to  "««Jt*i>' 
fight  to  form  or  break  their  habits  are  the  most  human  of 
animals  and,  therefore,  best  fitted  to  survive.  Self-asser- 
tion, self-protection,  self-preservation,  are  the  normal  lead- 
ing traits  of  young  childhood.  Their  primacy,  however, 
ought  not  to  become  a  tyranny.  Two  other  sets  of  habits 
ought  to  go  along  with  the  self-assertion  set,  and  become 
coordinate  with  it.  Let  us  call  these  the  sympathetic  and 
the  psychical.  The  little  child's  sympathy  is  egoistic,  and 
ought  to  be;  and  so  its  psychicality — its  curiosity,  love 
of  sensation,  power  of  preceptive  analysis  and  synthesis. 
Each  child  ought  to  exercise  self-assertion  and  at  the  same 
time  to  recognize  and  suffer  it  in  other  children.  So  sym- 
pathy and  psychicality  are  to  be  had  by  self,  and  granted 
to  others.  The  education  of  the  mother's  lap  and  the 
training  of  the  nursery  ought  to  train  self-dependence 
most  of  all,  without  neglecting  the  other  great  habits.  Self- 
assertion  without  psychical  alertness  and  sympathy  becomes 
stubbornness  and  other  forms  of  "  spoil."  The  egoistic 
habits  become  false  and  morbid  without  the  close  com- 
panionship of  social  imitation  and  psychical  invention. 
Perpetual  motion  ought  to  alternate  with  Rip  Van  Winkle 
naps  in  the  early  stages  of  childhood.  I  do  not  intend  to 
deny  the  existence  of  profound  and  far-reaching  indi- 
vidual differences  in  little  children.  Some  children  need  to 
be  stimulated;  others  need  repression.  But  the  habit  of 
prompt  and  effective  self-assertion  ought  to  underlie  all 
else.  Egoism  need  not  be  selfishness  ;  strength  of  desire 
need  not  mean  unreasonableness.  Nevertheless,  strong 
strenuousness,  self-activity  (if  you  please),  must  come  early 

—  13  — 


Love  and  Law. 

and  become  unobtrusively,  unconsciously  habitual.     We 
®P^"*-  all  agree  that  little  children  ought  to  have  nothing  to  do 

with  fear.  Though  they  have  very  strong  sympathetic  and 
gregarious  instincts,  they  know  little  of  the  fulness  of  love. 
Precocious  emotional  love  is  usually  a  deadly  thing.  But 
it  is  natural  and  seemly  for  the  little  ones  to  be  angry  and 
sin  not.  Self-control  is  possible  only  to  those  who  have 
natural  self-assertion.  Note,  however,  as  we  have  already 
insisted,  that  self-assertion  is  not  normal  unless  going 
along  with  habitual  sympathy  and  habitual  psychical  alert- 
ness. "Be  a  person  and  respect  others  as  persons,"  is  a 
maxim  for  the  beginning  of  life.  Love  God  with  yourself 
and  your  neighbor  a^  yourself,  is  the  goal  to  be  striven  for. 
We  want  our  little  ones  to  be  affectionate  and  alert,  but 
also  and  especially  spirited.  Let  us  begin  with  spirit  and 
strive  to  attain  to  spirituality.  This  is  what  the  good  folk 
may  mean  when  they  say,  "Respect  the  individuality  of 
the  child."  Yes,  and  he  must  have  an  individuality  that 
can  be  respected.  Surely  we  have  had  enough  of  the 
loving  babe  that  develops  into  the  adolescent  egoist  and 
cynic.  Much  of  the  storm  and  stress  supposed  character- 
istic of  the  youth  ought  to  be  healthily  and  regularly 
worked  off  in  ihe  nursery  and  the  kindergarten.  I  confess 
to  a  dislike  to  the  "angelic"  forms  of  the  just  mentioned 
in  titutions.  The  rhythm  of  work  and  play  is  the  greatest 
of  habits  for  distinct  but  social  individuals.  Old  and 
well-established  ought  this  rhythm  to  be  when  the  child 
comes  to  the  high-school  age.  New  adjustments  and  new 
habits  must  come  from  the  new  forces  operating  at  that 
time,  but  the  new  ought  to  be  grafted  on  the  old.  The 
youth's  new  childhood  ought  to  be  helped  for  sanity  by 


Love  and  Laiv. 

the  father-self    of    his  strenuous,    well-habituated  child- 
hood. Spontaneltf 
T)        r-         •  ""'1  Habit. 

-By  this  time  you  probably  see  that  I  am  advocating  custom  and 
generic  habits  of  character,  rather  than  the  tricks  of  •«^>'Kion- 
muscle  sometimes  valued  because  facile.  Habit  ought  to 
free  life,  not  clog  it.  Mechanism  is  useful  only  as  it  serves 
spontaneity,  which,  in  turn,  must  become  habitual  in  order 
to  become  structural  in  character.  Mechanical  habit  may 
enable  us  to  correspond  with  a  given  environment ;  char- 
acter habit  sets  us  to  taming  nature,  our  fellow  creatures 
and  ourselves.  Sometimes  the  parent  and  the  teacher 
have  to  expend  vast  energy  in  trying  to  train  the  child's 
sympathetic  habits  or  his  psychical  habits,  but  this 
he  does  without  sacrificing  the  habit  of  self-assertiom. 
The  little  child  is  grasping,  gregarious,  playful;  let  him  be 
himself,  aye,  make  him  be  himself  in  all  these  phases  of 
activity.  Let  love  and  law  work  together  at  the  start 
under  the  form  of  spontaneity  and  habit. 

Religion  is  the  key-note  of  this  movement  in  life's 
symphony.  Not  craven  religion,  but  reverence  founded 
on  self-assertion,  sympathy  and  psychical  sensitiveness.  We 
assert  ourselves  in  order  that  we  may  sacrifice  ourselves  ; 
and  we  do  this — we  "die  daily" — that  we  may  live  in  the 
freedom  of  the  truth  in  knowing  ourselves  and  others. 
The  sympathy  of  the  habit-stage  tends  to  beget  the  reli- 
gion of  the  custom-stage.  Just  as  by  "  habit"  I  do  not 
mean  muscle  tricks  only,  so  by  "  custom  "  I  have  in  mind 
something  larger  and  more  generic  than  particular  usages, 
maxims,  rites  and  ceremonies.  The  life  of  custom  is 
religious,  proprietary  and  empirical.  If  you  are  not  too 
much   frightened   by  these    terms — which  are   not  of  my 


Love  and  Laru. 

coining — I  think  I  can  make  them  clear.     The  sympathy 
The  Primitive     q(  jhc  habit-Stage   bccomes  the  religion   of   the  custom- 

View  of 

Ljfe,  Stage.     Religion  is  self-conscious  sympathy  aware  of  its 

hopeless  limitations.  The  world  seems  great  and  large  ; 
we  feel  feeble  and  small.  We  feel  that  the  self  without 
is  stronger  and  more  significant  than  the  self  within  us. 
The  past  means  more  than  the  present  or  the  future.  Our 
fathers  were  greater  than  we  are,  for  all  we  have  they  gave 
us — and  give  us ;  as  we  have  other  selves,  so  have  they, 
and  theirs  are  greater  than  ours,  for  they  were  before  ours. 
In  all  this  I  am  not  trying  to  entice  you  into  accepting  any 
particular  view  of  the  origin  of  religion.  All  I  want  to  do 
is  to  illustrate  the  animistic  view  of  life  that  primitive  self- 
consciousness  everywhere  seems  to  hold.  Custom  is  pri- 
marily the  product  of  animism,  and  religion  is  its  soul. 
Religion  may  be  agnostic,  pantheistic,  fetishistic,  poly- 
theistic or  what  not,  but  it  is  always  sympathetic  reverence 
and  dependence.     Therefore,  all  men  are  religious. 

But  let  us  turn  to  the  "empirical  "  phase  of  custom. 
This  is  the  outgrowth  of  "  psychical  "  habits.  Perception 
leads  to  explanation,  and  our  empirical  instincts  try  their 
hand  at  rough  and  ready  explanations.  Hence  mythol- 
ogizing  of  all  kinds.  Post  hoc  ergo  propter  hoc  is  the 
favorite  logic  of  childish  minds.  Animistic  explanations 
of  man  and  nature  result  therefrom,  colored  usually  by 
the  light  from  the  dominant  religious  instincts.  Strange 
it  is,  but  true,  that  our  much  vaunted  common  sense  is 
just  a  mythological  reading  of  our  experience,  corrected 
by  the  corrected  mythology  or  knowledge  come  to  us  from 
the  past.  Whether  or  not  Greek  mythology  properly 
trains  Anglo-Saxon  common  sense,  is  another  question.    I 


l.ove  and  Laiv. 

doubt  not  it  performed  that  and  other  functions  for  Greek 

children.     Religion  and   the  rough  thinking  of  common    Hero-worship 

°  °  in  the  School. 

sense  were  born  together,  and  a  third  form  of  animism 
came  with  them,  I  mean  the  proprietary  instincts.  Magic 
and  private  property  seem  to  us  little  akin.  Yet  in  each 
there  is  an  attempt  at  control  of  the  powers  of  nature  by 
means  of  an  imaginary  extension  of  one's  personality. 
Self-assertion,  you  see,  ripens  into  self-conscious  egohood. 
Here  again,  we  normally  find  the  religious  instincts  exert- 
ing strong  pressure.  It  is  the  sacredness  of  property  and 
personal  rights,  individual  and  communal,  that  attracts 
our  attention.  "Possession  is  nine-tenths  of  the  law,"  is 
a  proprietary  maxim  empirically  expressed,  but  almost  any 
primary  grade  child  will  show  you  that  there  is  religion  in 
it  also.  Indeed,  the  whole  array  of  folk-lore  maxims, 
saws  and  proverbs  will  show  this  close  connection  of  the 
religious,  the  empirical  and  the  proprietary  instincts,  with 
the  accent  normally  on  the  religious.  These  instincts,  then, 
mark  out  for  us  the  main  divisions  of  the  realm  of  custom. 
Habit  is  a^^similated,  and  spontaneity  becomes  morality. 
A  glance  at  our  primary  school  curriculum  will  show 
that  it  expresses  the  custom-stage  as  a  rule.  Facts  and 
principles  tend  to  be  received  on  authority;  the  honor 
I)rinciple,  backed  up  by  overwhelming  public  opinion, 
becomes  the  leading  personal  motive  ;  respect  for  sympa- 
thetic but  strong  and  valid  authority  is  the  leading  discip- 
linary agency.  Historical  and  ethical  hero-worship  is 
perhaps  the  most  striking  result  of  good  teaching  in  the 
primary  school.  Here,  possibly,  we  find  the  civic  form 
of  that  fear  of  the  Lord  which  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 

—  17  — 


Love  and  Law. 

Yes,  wisdom  comes  next,  and  self-respecting  reverence 
Co-ordination     jg  the  best  preparation  for  it.     The  love  that  casts  out  fear 

in  Character. 

IS  a  reverent  love,  and  the  law  that  fulfils  and  transcends 
custom  is  rational  law.  True  wisdom  is  loving  insight 
and  rational  love.  The  child  must  come  to  find  out 
what  is  worth  loving  in  himself  and  others;  so  he  seeks  the 
truth  that  shall  make  him  free.  "  Secondary  "  education, 
wherever  begun — and  no  one  knows  exactly  where  and 
when — ought  to  be  the  beginning  of  active  search  for 
truth.  Call  it  "rediscovery  "  if  you  please,  but  it  ought 
to  be  something  more  than  the  active  reception  of  custom, 
no  matter  how  rational  the  custom.  With  the  new  birth 
of  the  body  in  adolescence  ought  to  come  the  new  birth 
of  the  character.  To  think  whole  thoughts,  to  prepare  for 
the  freedom  soon  to  come,  that  it  may  not  turn  into 
slavery  to  habit  and  custom,  or  caprice,  sentimentality 
and  lawlessness — this  the  task.  The  adolescent  needs  law 
and  love — each  and  both.  And  yet  the  (we?)  brain-stuf- 
fers  are  at  hand.  Fortunately,  the  content  of  the  high 
school's  work  contains  much  orderly  knowledge  that  trains 
for  law.  Then,  too,  even  grind  has  an  orderly  element  in 
it.  Pity  it  is  that  the  differentiation  of  the  high  school  so 
often  has  so  little  integration  to  go  with  it.  Habit  and 
custom  must  be  impressed  in  the  high  school  and  every- 
where else,  but  too  much  of  them  is  depressing  and 
deadening.  Unintegrated  departmentalism  has  little  time 
for  the  enthusiasm  of  insight,  hence  the  departmentally- 
minded  freshman  with  the  edge  off  his  intellectual  appe- 
tite is  a  common  occurrence.  Would  that  we  had  more 
coordination  of  teachers,  of  children,  of  parents,  along 
with  more  coordination  of  studies.     There  ought  to  be 

—  18  — 


Love  and  Law. 

some  way  of  hcli)ing  the  adolescent  to  gain  a  little  real 
culture  and  wisdom,  a  little  real  rational  autonomy,  before  Adolescence, 
the  common  school  work  is  completed.  And  yet  even 
university  graduates  are  being  turned  out  with  pigeon-hole 
minds.  This  is  said  to  be  the  "comparative  age;"  then 
why  is  the  comparative  mind  so  superlatively  absent  in 
the  children  we  claim  to  be  educating?  But  I  must  not 
scold,  for  our  grandsires  "drew  long  bows  at  Hastings." 
Even  when  we  pay  some  attention  to  adolescence  and  the 
long  preparation  for  it,  we  are  too  much  inclined  to  talk 
about  the  adolescent  as  a  single  type.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  adolescent  may  be  loving  or  loveless,  lawless  or 
legalistic,  or  he  may  be  incoordinate,  unbalanced,  incoher- 
ent. He  needs  to  have  the  morality  of  custom  become 
the  spirituality  of  law,  of  principle.  Equipped  with 
guiding  logical  instincts,  he  should  come  into  self-con- 
scious institutional  life,  and  into  a  knowledge  of  personal 
and  civil  rights  and  duties.  Rights  and  duties,  institu- 
tions and  constitutions,  should  htcovcvt  significant  to  him. 
Citizenship  and  other  responsibilities  come  to  him  soon 
enough,  and  he  should  find  himself  prepared  for  them. 
Mere  academic  responsibility  is  no  fit  preparation  for  life. 
— But  I  am  scolding  again,  and  what  is  worse,  probably 
scolding  evolution  !  Our  high  schools  and  other  schools, 
higher  and  lower,  are  no  doubt  as  good  as  they  can  be — 
at  this  time  and  under  the  circumstances. 

At  the  risk  of  being  obscure  on  account  of  excessive 
brevity,  I  want  to  sum  up  our  discussion  of  development 
in  orderliness  by  once  more  stating  the  oft-stated  "  object 
of  education."  Suppose,  then,  we  put  it  this  way:  Edu- 
cation is  a  process  of  training,  nurture  and  development. 


Love  and  Law. 


Personality. 
Man  vs. 
Machine. 


The  training  is  primarily  for  habit,  then  custom,  then 
law.  We  nurture  instincts,  then  interests  ("many 
sided  "),  then  principles.  While  we  train  and  nurture, 
we  also  develop:  (i).  Spontaneity.  (2).  Morality.  (3). 
Spirituality.  Character-culture  results  in  the  broaden- 
ing, deepening  and  internalising  of  social,  individual 
and  rational  personality.  It  unifies  freedom,  reason 
and  grace;  it  coordinates  the  spiritual  forces  and  pro- 
ducts of  civilization,  society  and  culture.  Having  said 
some  things  that  sound  rather  vague  even  to  me,  I 
hasten  to  add  that  in  some  form  or  other  they  have 
been  said  again  and  again.  I  say  them  now  because  I  do 
not  want  to  be  understood  to  confine  education  to  the 
"law"  side.  The  vagueness  may  be  due  partly  to 
brevity,  somewhat  to  the  fact  that  the  deepest  ideals 
of  the  race  must  htfelt,  and  perhaps  in  some  measure  to 
the  imminence  of  the  other  aspect  of  our  subject  the  Law 
of  Love.  Before  attempting  our  prosaic  (but  unhysteri- 
cal)  telling  of  this  old,  old  story,  we  may  profitably  glance 
at  a  very  practical  side  of  the  theory  of  discipline — the 
teacher  as  a  representative  of  law. 

The  teacher  is  a  representative  of  law  eternal  and  law 
internal.  He  must  himself  be  law-abiding.  He  must 
have  been  trained  for  habit,  custom  and  law.  He  is 
responsible  to  the  State  and  to  Ciod,  and  should  not  be 
shorn  of  his  representativeness  by  the  machinery  of  school 
organization.  The  teacher  who  has  to  "  govern  "  through 
the  principal  ought  to  be  reformed,  or  turned  out  to  graze. 
Machinery,  however  technically  perfect,  can  do  nothing 
for  character  unless  its  wheels  do  the  bidding  of  persons. 
Now  principals  and  superintendents  and  others  in  au- 
—20  — 


Love  a7id  Laiv. 

thority  have  about  as  much  as  they  can  do  in  managing 

the    machinery,  instead   of   being  managed   by  it.     The   i-'^'mg  stones. 

The  Law  of 

principal  and  the  rod  ought  to  be  disciplinary  last  resorts —  Love, 
perhaps  alternative.  Let  the  power  of  the  State's  full 
authority  stand  behind  the  teacher — and  stay  there.  The 
only  real  educative  agents  are  concrete  persons.  To  dis- 
cipliney<7r  the  teacher  and  by  machinery  is  to  put  a  pre- 
mium on  Moloch  and  materialism.  By  all  means  let  us 
with  Kipling  put  spiritual  life  into  all  the  machinery  we 
use,  even  into  Board  meetings,  but  let  us  be  still  more 
anxious  to  remember  with  Edwin  Markham,  our  California 
schoolmaster  poet,  that 

"  Nothing  is  Living  Stone,  nothing  is  sure, 
That  is  not  whitened  in  the  Social  Fire," 

and  with  him  careful  not  to  forget  that 

"  Man  is  himself  a  fate,  himself  a  cause. 

And  he  can  change  the  destiny  of  things." 

Why  does  "love  fulfilling  the  law"  sum  up  the 
meaning  of  the  highest  things  ?  Love,  like  liberty,  has 
many  crimes  committed  in  its  name.  Men  have  been 
known  to  improve  on  the  Bible  ethics  by  asking  us  to  love 
our  neighbors  better  than  ourselves.  Teachers  have  told 
me  that  their  hearts  have  swelled  with  a  great  love  for 
each  little  child  in  a  class  of  forty.  Mine  never  did,  I 
have  a  right  to  my  own  taste  and  preferential  choice.  We 
WO)' emotionally  love  the  children — all,  some  of  the  time; 
some,  all  of  the  time;  but  7iot  all,  all  of  the  time  !  Nor 
ought  we.  Some  of  them  ought  to  excite  the  heart-swell- 
ing of  indignation,  or  of  grief — at  least,  some  of  the  time. 
Emotional,   heart-swelling    love    is   exhausting  when    too 

-21- 


Love  and  Law. 

continuous,    and    distracting    when    too    indiscriminate, 
i^ove  and  Besides,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  reciprocity.     If  it  takes 

Worth.  ,      .  , 

two  to  make  a  quarrel,  it  ought  to  take  two  to  make 
a  loving.  When  I  was  a  child,  I  often  preferred 
teachers  righteously  indignant  to  the  same  stricken  of 
sentimentality.  Both  phenomena  made  me  uncomfort- 
able, but  I  saw  some  sense  in  the  one,  and  couldn't  see 
what  the  other  was  "up  to."  Perhaps  the  children  of 
to-day  are  not  so  unregenerate.  No;  if  I  am  to  love  my 
neighbor  as  myself,  I  must  love  myself.  Yet  I  must 
respectfully  decline  to  have  my  heart  lovingly  swell 
toward  myself.  The  heart  swells  that  way  only  after  the 
head  has  swollen  first.  Evidently  each  one  of  Jus  must 
have  a  self  worth  loving;  or,  as  Bishop  Hugh  Miller 
Thomson  says,  a  "soul  w^rM  saving."  If  we  are  sons 
.of  God,  made  in  His  image,  we  ought  to  have  ourselves 
amount  to  something — and  not  whine  and  cringe  and 
shirk  !  Let  us  have  representative  selves — individual, 
social,  rational,  and  demand  these  of  and  for  every  one  in 
proportion  as  he  can  show  them  forth.  "  Ideal  peaks  are 
possible  to  men."  Love  is  based  on  worth.  Love  is  the 
set  of  the  soul  in  everlasting  affirmation  of  a  character's 
infinite  pricelessness.  My  soul  is  come  from  God.  Would 
it  be  worthy,  let  it  keep  close  to  Him,  His  Kingdom 
and  His  Righteousness.  Because  we  know  that  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  within  us,  we  seek  to  have  it 
worthily  spread;  and  as  it  is  and  spreads  in  us,  so  must  it 
be  and  spread  in  our  brother,  and  especially  our 
younger  brother,  the  little  child.  We  caji  love  thus 
all  the  children  all  the  time,  for  they  are  all  treasures, 
precious,   inestimable.      We    have    02ir    likes    and    dis- 

—  22- 


Love  and  Law. 

likes,  but    our    love  has  us  through     them   all.     We  are 

angry  with  these  little  ones;  we  grieve  over  them;  we  fear   intcest, 

"  •'  >  b  '  Sympathy 

for  them;  they  surprise  and  shock  us;  they  rejoice  and  and  Tact, 
gladden  us — and  because  we  love  them.  So  child-study, 
like  man-study,  is  inevitable  ;  for  we  must  be  interested 
in  the  children,  would  we  value  them.  Interest  means 
"there  is  something  between"  us,  and  with  interest  goes 
sympathy,  because  we  "  feel  with  "  those  we  know;  there  is 
something,  5t?w<f  tie,  "  between  us."  With  interest  and 
sympathy  is  gentle  tact!  The  "  common  "  feeling  means 
the  ''touch"  of  the  elbow,  the  touch  of  self-respecting, 
other-valuing  comradeship. 


—23 


"r-^-ss-u. 


V 


IfHtKMi 


ill' 


M' 


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